Black Wolf (64 page)

He slashed
savagely at a wing, shredded part of the membrane, restraining an
urge to vomit from the taste. It shrieked, and its voice joined in
with another—must be Aindry's target, he hadn't felt anything from
that strange echo-effect. Warily, Jesse circled, feinted in,
retreated before the teeth, ducked to the right and came back to
the left, and dug his own teeth into the underside of its centre
throat.

Still
shrieking, it flung its head up, leaving behind a mouthful of flesh
in the process. Jesse spat it out in revulsion.

Ha! Take that,
beast! Bet that hurts a bit!

He felt a
flash of pain from Jaisan, felt his brother's dagger fall and the
instant response of shifting to wolf, and hoped he wasn't hurt too
badly.

He seized the
centre throat again, this time got a better grip and held on for
all he was worth. The teeth of the right head scored down the
length of his side; he whined in pain, but dug all four feet into
the ground to anchor and tightened his grasp grimly. The centre
head fought to throw him off, the right head and right claws struck
repeatedly at him, but he could evade the claws.

The centre
head went limp, everything inside crushed.

Two down, one
to go.

The demon's
form melted into darkness again, and reshaped itself.

This form
wasn't physically impressive; in fact, it was simply a human man in
his mid-forties, hair cut short and neat, dressed for the office
though the dark-grey jacket had been shed, white sleeves rolled up
to forearms. From one hand swung a doubled length of computer
network cable, the outer sheath partly stripped to expose the eight
wires within...

Jess whined
again, flattened himself on his stomach, wriggling backwards away
from him, tail tucked between his legs.
Don't hit me, don't hit
me, oh please god don't whip me with the cable again! I didn't
tell... oh, god, yes I did, I told Kev, he said never to tell
anybody ever or he'd...

"Jesse," the
man-demon said reprovingly. "Where have you been? Your mother and I
have been worried sick about you. You've been misbehaving. Which
means you have to be punished, you know that, and yet you keep
right on doing things you know you aren't supposed to do. Come
here, right now, and we'll get that out of the way, and then we'll
go home and find you a better counsellor this time."

No! No more
punishments, no more counsellors, please no...

He hit
something, couldn't retreat any farther; he cowered as the man
approached him, smiling tolerantly, the cable swinging in his
hand.

"Jess!" Jaisan
screamed at him. "Kill it! Before it can kill you!
Now
!"

Wasn't Jais
furform...?

Kill before it
killed him.

He'll kill me
if he catches me...

Killed
everyone, killed Mom...

Will kill Jais
and Aindry and the mages and everyone waiting in the house...

All the
different threads of terror blurred together, melted back into
rage.

You fucked up
my life and you never paid for it, I'm the one who's gone through
hell and you stayed nice and cosy in your fancy house/on the demon
plane/in the lake...

He gathered
himself, launched himself directly at the demon in human form.

The demon,
anticipating victory, was caught completely off-guard as a hundred
and forty pounds of black wolf collided with its chest. The cable
flicked across his back, once, twice, but his fur muffled the
stinging, and he had the demon down, could claw at its chest until
he reached the ribs, crunch a couple of ribs out of his way and dig
deep for the heart... His teeth closed on it, and he tossed his
head sideways, ripping it out.

With a last
ear-tormenting shriek, the demon disappeared, leaving only a bloody
stain on the grass.

Panting, Jess
shifted back to human and found his dagger, a bright gleam against
dark grass, then turned to see which of his siblings needed him
more.

Easy choice:
both were working on the same demon, so one or the other must have
been a little faster than him. He ran over to join them.

The demon
seemed uncertain, alone against all three of them, its compatriots
dead. Jaisan furform and Aindry with her dagger had already wounded
it badly, though two heads remained active.

Jesse's dagger
sliced along the side of one neck, and in the instant after Jaisan
grabbed that throat, holding on relentlessly, though it shook him
entirely off his feet, briefly right off the ground. The other head
snaked towards him, but Aindry slashed at it and kept its attention
on her, while Jesse thrust his dagger deep into its chest, stopping
only when hilt met hide, and then twisting. Both heads shrieked,
attempted to twine back towards him, but couldn't; Jesse's dagger
was torn out of his hand, though, before he could free it.

He saw silver
shining faintly nearby—Jaisan's dagger. Was the twin-bond strong
enough to make it more than mere metal in his hand, though it
wasn't his own name? Worth a try. He darted back, circled around to
get it, then watched for a chance.

The
dragon-demon clawed vainly at its tormentors, and Jess felt
Jaisan's pain again, shallowly down his stomach; it left an
opening, though, and he bolted in, praying devoutly to whatever had
kept him alive this long. His own dagger he used as a step, and
vaulted himself up on the dragon's back. With Jaisan's dagger he
dug into its backbone, prying vertebrae apart.

They
separated, and the body collapsed; Jess jumped clear, landed the
wrong way, and stumbled to his feet unsure how long his right leg
would bear his weight.

Jaisan let go
of a limp head, backed off a step, gulping air heavily.

Aindry
retreated a few feet as well, just out of the reach of the last
head, watching it intently; abruptly, she moved forward and
straddled the neck from behind, seized the head in both hands, and
put her full weight behind twisting it sharply sideways. Bone
crunched, the demon screamed, and its body melted away.

We did it! We
killed all three and we're still alive, all of us!

Jaisan raised
his head, let out a howl of pure triumph; Aindry and Jess both
shifted to wolf, added their voices to his, and they sang the
victory to the silver moon above.

The demon-rage
began to fade, taking with it that strange echo of Jaisan, and the
adrenaline keeping them on their feet. One at a time, they
staggered and collapsed.

"Impressive,"
someone said, from not too far away. "I wasn't sure how much I
believed them about the danger. It would seem they had a reason to
fear after all."

"Never doubted
it." That was Kevin. "Now, you were saying something about not
letting me off this time?"

Please be
careful, guys... don't make me have to cry for you, when everything
should be wonderful now...
Bone-deep exhaustion made it hard
just to stay awake, but he was going to watch, he
had
to
watch...

62

Kevin forced
worry for the wolves and fear for himself and Lori and Shaine into
the back of his mind, and activated his shields, gold and white and
sunset-red. The world had narrowed considerably as the sun vanished
and the sky darkened; he had the solid presence of the shields in
the walls to orient himself against, but otherwise, everything was
a grey and black blur. Except the three exhausted
demon-wolves—moonsilver and shadow with hints of amethyst or
sapphire or garnet, or slightly too-cool heat-images, depending on
which sight he used—and Lori who was just raising her familiar
summer-green and tawny-gold shields, clearly visible in their
light, and the Lucian mage, who at some point had raised his own,
crimson and saffron and demon-coloured.

At least he'd
be able to see anything created by elven magic, when it came, and
it helped to know that the Lucian mage—what was his name again?
Patrick?—was probably no better able to see than he and Lori
were.

"Will you die
happy knowing that your pet wolves are safe?"

Kevin
shrugged. "If I have to die, it may as well be for a good cause.
They aren't, however, safe from you yet." Lori moved closer to him,
slid her hand into his, warm and steady. Shields shivered where
they touched, then melded together into a single whole without
difficulty.

"You're
smarter than you look. Not that it will help you."

Kevin smiled.
"We'll do our best to make it interesting for you."
May your
life be interesting... And it will be. If you only knew what's
waiting just inside the walls...

Brigid, Lady,
be with us... by Brigid and Lugh, by the Moonwolf and the Horned
God, by... oh, Tiamat and Poseidon, maybe... let us get through
this!

"Count on it,"
Lori muttered. "So. Since we challenged you, that would give you
the right to begin."

The demon-mage
gestured, and the stars fell.

It felt like
it, anyway: countless tiny silvery lights rained down over them.
They slid off the shields, but each left a dark streak in the
shimmer, eating at it. One got through, began to burrow into his
arm like a live thing; Kevin gritted his teeth, held very still,
trying to ignore the increasing pain. It had to be an illusion, his
shields would have put up more of a fight against anything directly
dangerous. All he had to do was disbelieve it. Another made it
through, hit his shoulder, and burrowed in as well, and he heard
Lori's breath hiss between her teeth.

*Illusion,*
she said.

*I think
so.*

*I
know
so.* Her tone left no room at all for doubt.

This isn't
real. It's only illusion. Don't believe it and it'll end and you
can get on to the next round.

A sensation
that made his stomach twist, of something inside his arm and
crawling along the bone, both of them working their way towards his
pounding heart.

Please,
Brigid, let them be illusion...

Agony
shuddered along every nerve... and the pain stopped, the crawling
sensations fading away.

Patrick's
eyebrows rose. "I was right. You do have an incredible amount of
nerve."

"I've heard
that one before." He had a brief exchange with Lori, too fast for
either to bother formulating thoughts into words, and together they
wove will and moonlight into a winged serpent of green and gold and
white, and sent it at Patrick. It coiled around the other's
shields, but could go no further.

Patrick
gestured scornfully at it, plainly expecting it to dissipate.

It didn't; it
grew.

Patrick
paused, re-evaluating, and threw another attack at it. Again the
serpent absorbed it.

"A pretty
trick," he commented. He cast something different, Kevin thought it
was actually
negative
energy, probably drawn from his
demons, and the winged serpent cancelled out.

Too bad; he
was rather pleased with that particular invention, adapted from
something Shaine had shown them.

Mage-fights
are so civilized. Not like wolf-fights. You take turns and you can
even chat in the middle...

I'd give a lot
for something as straightforward as a wolf-fight right now!

Moonlight
gathered, shaped itself into a massive saffron and crimson dragon,
all horns and spikes. The whip-thin tail lashed towards them, slid
off their shields, but left a darker streak where it had gouged
them. Lori poured energy into fixing it, while Kevin created his
phoenix, hovering in the air above him, all the colours of the sun
at dawn and noon and dusk. He sent it spiralling higher, had it
stoop towards the dragon's eyes, diamond talons extended. Sensory
input doubled; he closed his eyes, concentrating purely on what the
phoenix could see, rather than trying to analyse two different
images.

The dragon
turned its head upwards, orienting on the phoenix, and launched
itself heavily into the air. The phoenix was less than half its
size, but intensely brighter, dancing fast and agile around the
dragon.

Lori's
green-eyed tawny lioness lunged upwards at the dragon from beneath,
claws and fangs of emerald tearing gaping wounds in the dragon's
belly, wounds that bled moonlight.

Patrick
snarled something Kevin couldn't make out, and the dragon folded
its wings; the lioness barely got out from under it before it
landed. The ruby talons of the rear feet dug themselves deep into
the ground, and the tail slashed at the lioness, even as the gaping
jaws snapped at the phoenix. Kevin pulled it back out of reach,
losing only a few fiery feathers in the process; the lioness
crouched, and leaped over the tail just before it reached her,
going straight for the dragon's throat. Through phoenix eyes, he
caught a glimpse of himself and Lori, hands still linked, his own
eyes closed, but Lori's green eyes were open, watching both ways at
once, her expression alert and fiercely focused.

Maybe we
should've warned him that Lori's beaten almost every mage in Haven
and some from elsewhere at this game. Me included. And we've won as
partners before.